Quick Play Missions

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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I’ve been doing a quick play on Legend and Cataclysm and counting missions. I’ve only been counting ones that I know were quick play autoselected, not user selected, mostly from games I played by selecting quick play myself while other players were in the lobby I was hosting.

The reason I started doing this was that more tediously lengthy missions like Skittergate or The Enchanter’s Lair seem to come up more often. Since they are the most complained about coming up in quick play, I wanted to find out if it was true. I generally assumed that their seeming more common was due to a user bias: that players notice certain missions coming up more often simply because they might be more lengthy or difficult. I’ve noticed people complain about Athel Yenlui, The Blightreaper, Convocation of Decay, and Old Haunts because they are somewhat more difficult.

This isn’t a particularly large sample size here, but after about a week of only counting quick play missions that I know were not user-selected, here are the results:

Skittergate 7

The Enchanter’s Lair 9

Athel Yenlui 3

Blood in the Darkness 1

Empire in Flames 2

Fort Brachsenbrücke 2

The Screaming Bell 1

Convocation of Decay 4

Halescourge 2

Engines of War 1

The Blightreaper 3

The War Camp 2

Old Haunts 2

Righteous Stand 2

Against the Grain 3

Hunger in the Dark 1

Dark Omens 1

Garden of Morr 2

Interestingly, the first two missions that came up were The Enchanter’s Lair and Skittergate on Legend quick play, but they also actually were more common. One time, as soon as The Enchanter’s Lair came up, the host complained and ended the game immediately after it loaded.

Let’s say that my results here aren’t representative of the whole and that these missions coming up more often is a fluke, and outside my count, just a bias against them because they do seem to have always come up more often, I think that quick play missions shouldn’t be blindly random; perhaps special final boss missions should be slightly less common.

I’d like to see missions weighted so that some are more likely than others to come up. Missions from Helmgart that include bosses might be about 10% less likely to be chosen by quickplay; the final boss missions like Skittergate, The Enchanter’s Lair or Skittergate might be weighted even lower, maybe 30% less likely to show up. Then DLC lengthy missions about 10% less likely to show up.

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The QP system used to select maps you have completed fewer times more often.
I seem to remember that was changed (it was problematic also because it would lead to selecting DLC maps too often), but maybe the change was unintentionally reverted, or didn’t work that well?

Honestly I have no clue, but considering we still get beastmen in Bogenhafen after FS thought they had removed them twice is telling. It’s ok, as long as they keep trying :stuck_out_tongue:

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That sums up how I remember it. There has been an algorithm favoring missions which have been completed less often which meant that suiciding at the mission start had a counter-productive effect.

But I also seem to remember some notes saying this was changed - specifically because it would mean that quickplay after map release would ONLY have the new maps for weeks while the system plays catching up. For a short while people might like this but getting the same missions four weeks straight might be annoying.

However, OP should operate under the assumption that QP still doubles down on failed missions and trying the balance the number of completed attempts for all missions. Which would explain why Enchanter’s Lair is up there. But as OP said already himself. The sample size is pitiful.

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This is how it was supposed to work like ~18 months ago, I don’t know if it has changed since then:

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it’s listed in the back to ubersreik dlc patch notes, december 2018

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Also, the weekly event doesn’t seem to count into QP. I daresay the game is not tracking that, but it might just be anectodal experience. I know going from weekly into QP I got the same map.

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That’s right. The Weekly event does not count as quickplay DESPITE the player not even able to choose the map.

Also, last time I checked Chaos Wastes expedition again just count for a single quickplay and not one quickplay for each map which we had in the intermediate.

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This seems to be how quick play still works.

I took a look at the Lua matchmaking manager on Github. I have some experience using Lua for personal projects such as modifying old games with some scripts, but well-written code with properly named variables like this shouldn’t be too difficult for most to interpret.

The pseudo-code interpretation on Reddit looks correct. I think there are some pitfalls by weighting maps picked by players as being less likely to show up in quick play. Then the least popular maps will show up more often in quick play.

I’d still suggest that the weight should be adjusted to be lower for boss missions, especially the big boss missions such as Skittergate and The Enchanter’s Lair; those should be the rarest. Final boss missions should feel more unique and less likely to be picked since they mark the end of the DLC and the main campaign.

Then there are missions that have a high failure; mainly because things like The Enchanter’s Lair have a point at which clutching is near impossible. The boss will disable the player with flies; only sienna can get out with staff equipped by venting, and even if you parry every attack the boss throws at you, you’ll still get pushed into “the floor is lava” area of the boss fight at the end, forcing you to take damage.

Likewise, on the Skittergate clutching is difficult, I’ve often had teams with no decent boss damage. It’s very easy to get poked in the back by trash enemies right at the start and the boss will gun you down if you’re not paying attention to where you’re standing. So, being in a clutch situation while the Deathrattler is still alive or even while Rasknit is throwing spells, makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to help downed allies or rescue respawned ones.

On Convocation of Decay, even considering it was patched to be easier, if you are clutching, it is still unlikely you’ll win. Leaving the circle to kite around a crowd of elites so that you can get a clear shot at that one hook rate or assassin and res your buddies is going to make the mission longer and the cycle of waves of nasty enemies will repeat, and specials continue to spawn. Even if you do rescue a few team members, at that point there’s usually a wave of elites with a couple of specials engulfed within that will quickly end the game. Convocation of Decay is much easier when nobody goes down and/or at least one player stays within the circle from start to finish.

I think that given the nature of how difficult it can be to win on certain missions if a teammate goes down, it’s probably placing a higher weight on them, which doesn’t seem like a great idea. I did consider maybe part of the reasons this is done is for data collection purposes. They might want less completed maps to get more attention so that they know which maps might be needing some attention in patches.